Yeah, "several hundred thousand" is complete bullshit. Either the person is a bold faced liar or a complete moron. And I normally give people the benefit of the doubt!
iPhone hacks are great but the face of the iPhone hacking community is unfortunately a bunch of immature whiners. Kind of a shame really.
I don't know the specific law. I lived in France for a year in 2005-06, and had a Nokia phone from Orange. I got a 1 year contract, and after six months I could ask Orange to unlock the phone for me. All my french friends told me this was the law in France. I have no reason to doubt them. If you've ever lived in France, such a law probably wouldn't surprise you. Maybe there are some French readers here who can give more details?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler
Can you be more specific about french law? (genuinely curious)
Do manufacturers have to provide the means of unlocking? Or perhaps the service provider? Or perhaps it only has to be technically unlockable by a highly skilled third party?
Finally, perhaps service providers are only allowed to enforce a contract period of 6 months no matter whether their customer received a free phone.
With how much misinformation I hear about my own country, I don't know what to believe about others...
If the phone cannot be unlocked, why the insistence on a 2-year contract. Why not 1-year.
If the phone is locked to AT&T for it's lifetime, what's the point of having a 2-year contract when any subsequent sale of the phone by the original owner will only be to another person who will have to use it on AT&T.
Basically, by purchasing an iPhone you are signing a contract with AT&T for the entire lifetime of the phone.
I'll add to that one-- if it is locked for the life of the phone, why isn't there a warranty for the duration of your contract!?
The info from AT&T wasn't posted until after I purchased the phone and signed my contract AFAIK, a change from their previous policy on unlocking phones.
A company has the right to refuse to repair their product if it is modified, or used in a way that is outside their specified guidelines. Virtually every product you buy will say something to that effect.
They can void the warranty if you do something that "breaks" the unit. However, they can't take away your consumer rights. Their choosing to brick the units that have been unlocked (which sounds much more likely than the unlock interfering with the software update), is anti-consumer and would be punished. They don't have to repair it under warranty, but they are still liable for breaking your phone.
More and more, I'm thinking of sending mine back. Much of the functionality that I enjoy from my iPhone is provided by third party apps, and I don't plan to be in the US for the life of my iPhone. If unlocking it isn't acceptable to Apple, they can take it back.
They can void the warranty if you do something that "breaks" the unit. However, they can't take away your consumer rights. Their choosing to brick the units that have been unlocked (which sounds much more likely than the unlock interfering with the software update), is anti-consumer and would be punished. They don't have to repair it under warranty, but they are still liable for breaking your phone.
More and more, I'm thinking of sending mine back. Much of the functionality that I enjoy from my iPhone is provided by third party apps, and I don't plan to be in the US for the life of my iPhone. If unlocking it isn't acceptable to Apple, they can take it back.
You're making the same mistake others here are making. Apple said that they aren't going to deliberately do this, but with SOME of the unlocking software used. it could happen.
If they were deliberately doing it, they would have said that it would happen no matter what software you were using. They didn't.
I don't know the specific law. I lived in France for a year in 2005-06, and had a Nokia phone from Orange. I got a 1 year contract, and after six months I could ask Orange to unlock the phone for me. All my french friends told me this was the law in France. I have no reason to doubt them. If you've ever lived in France, such a law probably wouldn't surprise you. Maybe there are some French readers here who can give more details?
Unfortunately that isn't clear enough to be mean much of anything. In my experience, most people have no clue how laws actually read. Instead, they remember the end result in a simplified model that makes sense to them.
I don't mean to insult you or your friends. Rather, it is just a common thing among the general public. For instance, ask ten people off the street of a single city, what a landlord has to do to evict a tenant? You'll get wildly different responses as to what the "law" is.
In your example, you're saying the service provider had to unlock the phone right? Or is Orange also a phone manufacturer? What would have happened if Orange refused to unlock the phone? Would that have been illegal, a breach of contract, both, or neither?
What would it benefit Apple to spread FUD. People are going to attempt to hack no matter what, its doubtful Apple would scare many people out of hacking the phone if there really were no problems.
Apple knows the iPhone operating system better than anyone else. I would trust what they say over what the hacker community says. Since Apple has not yet released the code, the hacker community does not yet know what problems Apple is even talking about.
Developers have to continually fix compatibility/instability problems with software on the Mac. Which Apple does officially support. Why is it difficult to believe there are some serious problems with software on a closed platform that Apple does not openly support.
Unfortunately that isn't clear enough to be mean much of anything. In my experience, most people have no clue how laws actually read. Instead, they remember the end result in a simplified model that makes sense to them.
I don't mean to insult you or your friends. Rather, it is just a common thing among the general public. For instance, ask ten people off the street of a single city, what a landlord has to do to evict a tenant? You'll get wildly different responses as to what the "law" is.
In your example, you're saying the service provider had to unlock the phone right? Or is Orange also a phone manufacturer? What would have happened if Orange refused to unlock the phone? Would that have been illegal, a breach of contract, both, or neither?
Apple doesn't force you to update your unlocked iPhone. Consider yourselves warned. Once you unlock it, they're not going to fix it for you, apparently.
That's a big number representing a large percentage of the iPhones that have been sold to date.
Impossible.
Maybe the numbers are small, maybe not.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
1,000,000 vs 600,000.
Do the math.
I don't trust any of these people who are making the phone hacks. They have good reason to make people think that many people are using them. It's doubtful that many are.
Most people who download software never install it, much less use it. This is even more difficult, because of the warnings posted with the software.
As far as the problems people were having in the first two, or so, days, I do believe that those people did install their phones correctly.
It would have been insane for them to have bought their phones on the supposition that someone, somewhere, somewhen, might possibly, get some hack to work that would allow the phone to function on another network.
If people were that dumb, then they deserve any problems they might now have.
eBay might have seen a few hundred iPhones up for sale. When I looked, there were a few dozen, not thousands.
Please don'T use "whisper" numbers spread by people who only want to badmouth the situation. It is as reliable as the rest of what you've written down.
It is all FUD, from both sides. Apple is trying to discourage people from unlocking the phone by putting fear on them, and the hacker community is trying to get more people to unlock, so they claim the problem would be very serious.
At least Apple gave people a warning before the release of the software.
...why consumers shouldn't listen to hackers & technophiles trying to hijack a product to take it in their own direction. The hackers get what they deserve, the consumers are mugged again!
To anyone that believes that Apple will deliberately brick unlocked iPhones, explain me this:
How come Apple warned that only SOME of the unlocking methods would cause this problem, implying that the other methods won't cause bricking?
If Apple got out of their way to thwart unlocking applications, they would target ALL methods not just two specific ones. It would be probably much easier and logical for them to brick every iPhone with hacked SIM settings than to target only two specific methods.
To anyone that believes that Apple will deliberately brick unlocked iPhones, explain me this:
How come Apple warned that only SOME of the unlocking methods would cause this problem, implying that the other methods won't cause bricking?
If Apple got out of their way to thwart unlocking applications, they would target ALL methods not just two specific ones. It would be probably much easier and logical for them to brick every iPhone with hacked SIM settings than to target only two specific methods.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
The same situation occured 20 years ago, when the Macintosh was a completely closed system, not accessible by the outside world.
Since, Apple has learned that using public domain solutions (FreeBSD, SAMBA, Apache, JAVA etc. etc.) brings them into a far more profitable situation.
Now, it seems that this learning has to start all over again with their iPhone.
Imagine how many iPhones would already have been sold world-wide if Apple would not have sticked so much to their "one operator only" policy?
The European market would have been open already since June 2007. What a profit would it have been to sell the iPhone to early adopters for 600 Euros, by just releasing it to the normal retail channels?
Apple is now still struggling to get their place in Europe due to this too strict policy.
And for those of you who don't speak/understand French, here's a rough translation:
SIM locking is a authorized procedure in France in order to prevent fraudsters and thieves reselling the phone in France or abroad. It keeps a cell phone from being used on a network other than the one the SIM card was issued for. [so much for the basics but you all knew that]
Nevertheless, after a 6 month period, the operators [of the network] are obliged, on the customer's request, to freely provide the code to unlock the phone.
Or so.
Don't judge me too much on my French, it's becoming somewhat rusty.
As for the ligitimicy of this information: It comes directly from a French government body's website, the Directorate of competition, consumption and the repression of frauds.
Anyways, it will be highly entertaining to see what creative solutions Apple will come up with to accomodate the laws in the consumer friendly European countries.
edit: Just saw they did the translation already on 9to5mac. I feel so embarrassed now...
And for those of you who don't speak/understand French, here's a rough translation:
SIM locking is a authorized procedure in France in order to prevent fraudsters and thieves reselling the phone in France or abroad. It keeps a cell phone from being used on a network other than the one the SIM card was issued for. [so much for the basics but you all knew that]
Nevertheless, after a 6 month period, the operators [of the network] are obliged, on the customer's request, to freely provide the code to unlock the phone.
Or so.
Don't judge me too much on my French, it's becoming somewhat rusty.
As for the ligitimicy of this information: It comes directly from a French government body's website, the Directorate of competition, consumption and the repression of frauds.
Anyways, it will be highly entertaining to see what creative solutions Apple will come up with to accomodate the laws in the consumer friendly European countries.
edit: Just saw they did the translation already on 9to5mac. I feel so embarrassed now...
Your french is fine (it's the english you need to worry about....try "legitimacy"...)
While it is six months in France by law, it is zero months in Belgium and Luxemburg - where simlocking is not allowed. How many European markets does Apple intend to ignore while users cross the border, buy phones and unlock them? Won't take long for someone's competition authority to haul them into court... If Apple want to play in the EU, they'll have to play by EU rules.
So if the carrier is required to be to unlock the phone upon request after 6 months, that puts them in a bind when they aren't the manufacturer of the phone. That leads me to believe that the carrier would negotiate a contract with Apple that spells out what happens if Apple doesn't (or can't) provide the unlock mechanism in time.
My bet is that they already have such functionality built in or ready to go for a future firmware update. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll give consumers the ability to unlock phones at whim. I could see it being only possible via a triggering message sent via the current carrier's network.
In the long run though, I don't think apple is for "locked" phones. I think the current situation makes sense for them because of a number of factors. The iPhone roll-out was fairly smooth considering it was apple's first experience in selling a million mobile phones. Imagine how many more horror stories would have been posted in various forums if Apple had gone with 6 carriers instead of one for the roll-out. Providing support would have difficult for a company with zero experience in the mobile phone market. Also, Apple needed some insurance that they'd have a carrier for the iPhone for at least a few years. Exclusivity was probably the only way to land such an assurance.
In my opinion, locked phones are a business tool Apple needed to enter the market. After gaining a foothold though, I doubt Apple will need any form of locking.
On the other hand, hacking really doesn't seem like a concern of Apple's whatsoever. It doesn't go against any of the likely motives they had for using an exclusive carriers. To me it seems like hacking doesn't even enter their train of thought. Updates might break hacks simply because Apple isn't even looking at the hacks let alone testing for compatibility. There aren't enough hackers to make it worth their while.
Who cares how many phones have been hacked? Who cares how much money Apple is making or losing? Who cares if phones are sold and not activated through AT&T? That is not the point of this article.
The point is that Apple will be releasing an update soon and it "may" brick some phones. Apple may not care to test their update on hacked phones which is why they are saying "maybe" to it bricking some hacks. They may not care to understand completely how the hack works because that means they spend their time and money doing something they shouldn't have to do.
If the Developers can hack the phone, they can surely restore it. However, re-unlocking it or more accurately unlocking the latest firmware, may be a challenge, again, for them, which I am certain they are willing and eager to take on. It may take another two months to unlock SW 1.X.X. It may only be necessary for certain mods used.
Regardless of any pending updates (remember, it isn't out yet), hacked phones will continue to work and do not have to be udapted. Chillax...
Comments
iPhone hacks are great but the face of the iPhone hacking community is unfortunately a bunch of immature whiners. Kind of a shame really.
Can you be more specific about french law? (genuinely curious)
Do manufacturers have to provide the means of unlocking? Or perhaps the service provider? Or perhaps it only has to be technically unlockable by a highly skilled third party?
Finally, perhaps service providers are only allowed to enforce a contract period of 6 months no matter whether their customer received a free phone.
With how much misinformation I hear about my own country, I don't know what to believe about others...
Answered my own question.
WTF.
If the phone cannot be unlocked, why the insistence on a 2-year contract. Why not 1-year.
If the phone is locked to AT&T for it's lifetime, what's the point of having a 2-year contract when any subsequent sale of the phone by the original owner will only be to another person who will have to use it on AT&T.
Basically, by purchasing an iPhone you are signing a contract with AT&T for the entire lifetime of the phone.
I'll add to that one-- if it is locked for the life of the phone, why isn't there a warranty for the duration of your contract!?
The info from AT&T wasn't posted until after I purchased the phone and signed my contract AFAIK, a change from their previous policy on unlocking phones.
A company has the right to refuse to repair their product if it is modified, or used in a way that is outside their specified guidelines. Virtually every product you buy will say something to that effect.
They can void the warranty if you do something that "breaks" the unit. However, they can't take away your consumer rights. Their choosing to brick the units that have been unlocked (which sounds much more likely than the unlock interfering with the software update), is anti-consumer and would be punished. They don't have to repair it under warranty, but they are still liable for breaking your phone.
More and more, I'm thinking of sending mine back. Much of the functionality that I enjoy from my iPhone is provided by third party apps, and I don't plan to be in the US for the life of my iPhone. If unlocking it isn't acceptable to Apple, they can take it back.
They can void the warranty if you do something that "breaks" the unit. However, they can't take away your consumer rights. Their choosing to brick the units that have been unlocked (which sounds much more likely than the unlock interfering with the software update), is anti-consumer and would be punished. They don't have to repair it under warranty, but they are still liable for breaking your phone.
More and more, I'm thinking of sending mine back. Much of the functionality that I enjoy from my iPhone is provided by third party apps, and I don't plan to be in the US for the life of my iPhone. If unlocking it isn't acceptable to Apple, they can take it back.
You're making the same mistake others here are making. Apple said that they aren't going to deliberately do this, but with SOME of the unlocking software used. it could happen.
If they were deliberately doing it, they would have said that it would happen no matter what software you were using. They didn't.
I don't know the specific law. I lived in France for a year in 2005-06, and had a Nokia phone from Orange. I got a 1 year contract, and after six months I could ask Orange to unlock the phone for me. All my french friends told me this was the law in France. I have no reason to doubt them. If you've ever lived in France, such a law probably wouldn't surprise you. Maybe there are some French readers here who can give more details?
Unfortunately that isn't clear enough to be mean much of anything. In my experience, most people have no clue how laws actually read. Instead, they remember the end result in a simplified model that makes sense to them.
I don't mean to insult you or your friends. Rather, it is just a common thing among the general public. For instance, ask ten people off the street of a single city, what a landlord has to do to evict a tenant? You'll get wildly different responses as to what the "law" is.
In your example, you're saying the service provider had to unlock the phone right? Or is Orange also a phone manufacturer? What would have happened if Orange refused to unlock the phone? Would that have been illegal, a breach of contract, both, or neither?
It is all FUD, from both sides.
What would it benefit Apple to spread FUD. People are going to attempt to hack no matter what, its doubtful Apple would scare many people out of hacking the phone if there really were no problems.
Apple knows the iPhone operating system better than anyone else. I would trust what they say over what the hacker community says. Since Apple has not yet released the code, the hacker community does not yet know what problems Apple is even talking about.
Developers have to continually fix compatibility/instability problems with software on the Mac. Which Apple does officially support. Why is it difficult to believe there are some serious problems with software on a closed platform that Apple does not openly support.
and the French Law is here...
http://www.minefi.gouv.fr/directions...fiches/b31.htm
Generally, my friends are rarely clueless!
Unfortunately that isn't clear enough to be mean much of anything. In my experience, most people have no clue how laws actually read. Instead, they remember the end result in a simplified model that makes sense to them.
I don't mean to insult you or your friends. Rather, it is just a common thing among the general public. For instance, ask ten people off the street of a single city, what a landlord has to do to evict a tenant? You'll get wildly different responses as to what the "law" is.
In your example, you're saying the service provider had to unlock the phone right? Or is Orange also a phone manufacturer? What would have happened if Orange refused to unlock the phone? Would that have been illegal, a breach of contract, both, or neither?
That's a big number representing a large percentage of the iPhones that have been sold to date.
Impossible.
Maybe the numbers are small, maybe not.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
http://iphone.tuaw.com/2007/09/18/ip...-many-hackers/
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
1,000,000 vs 600,000.
Do the math.
Maybe the numbers are small, maybe not.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
http://iphone.tuaw.com/2007/09/18/ip...-many-hackers/
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
1,000,000 vs 600,000.
Do the math.
I don't trust any of these people who are making the phone hacks. They have good reason to make people think that many people are using them. It's doubtful that many are.
Most people who download software never install it, much less use it. This is even more difficult, because of the warnings posted with the software.
As far as the problems people were having in the first two, or so, days, I do believe that those people did install their phones correctly.
It would have been insane for them to have bought their phones on the supposition that someone, somewhere, somewhen, might possibly, get some hack to work that would allow the phone to function on another network.
If people were that dumb, then they deserve any problems they might now have.
eBay might have seen a few hundred iPhones up for sale. When I looked, there were a few dozen, not thousands.
Please don'T use "whisper" numbers spread by people who only want to badmouth the situation. It is as reliable as the rest of what you've written down.
It is all FUD, from both sides. Apple is trying to discourage people from unlocking the phone by putting fear on them, and the hacker community is trying to get more people to unlock, so they claim the problem would be very serious.
At least Apple gave people a warning before the release of the software.
...why consumers shouldn't listen to hackers & technophiles trying to hijack a product to take it in their own direction. The hackers get what they deserve, the consumers are mugged again!
McD
How come Apple warned that only SOME of the unlocking methods would cause this problem, implying that the other methods won't cause bricking?
If Apple got out of their way to thwart unlocking applications, they would target ALL methods not just two specific ones. It would be probably much easier and logical for them to brick every iPhone with hacked SIM settings than to target only two specific methods.
To anyone that believes that Apple will deliberately brick unlocked iPhones, explain me this:
How come Apple warned that only SOME of the unlocking methods would cause this problem, implying that the other methods won't cause bricking?
If Apple got out of their way to thwart unlocking applications, they would target ALL methods not just two specific ones. It would be probably much easier and logical for them to brick every iPhone with hacked SIM settings than to target only two specific methods.
Yes, I brought that up earlier.
Maybe the numbers are small, maybe not.
It's hard to say how many people have Installer.app running, but an article by a programmer who has been active in the rapidly evolving 3rd party iPhone app development scene suggested the numbers were actually very large.
http://iphone.tuaw.com/2007/09/18/ip...-many-hackers/
(And memebers of this community are the ones that would know this, as they can measure downloads.)
If the update breaks Installer.app and other jailbreaking reliant apps, then a lot of people will be inclined to stay on the earlier firmware 1.0.2, *and* become extremely angry at Apple for being denied Safari bug fixes, interface tweaks, etc.
(I agree Apple certainly shouldn't devote resources to supporting 3rd party apps, but taking hostile action is another matter: that's actually devoting resources to counter the hacks, not just ignoring them.)
As for the SIM unlock specifically, those numbers are harder to know. But consider this:
In the official figures released for the days of the last quarter when the iPhone went on sale, Apple reported many more sales than AT&T did activations.
270,000 vs 146,000.
Now, some of these could be explained by people waiting until the following week to use their iPhone (though seriously, if you'd just queued to buy it, would you have the patience to wait?) Others, by glitches in the AT&T activation system forcing a wait (though I don't think the majority of these lasted longer than 12 hours).
But many were probably also bought up by Ebay sellers. A large number of Ebay sales are to international buyers. Just do an Ebay search and check the feedback of big sellers to see this.
And I know that some overseas residents were at an Apple Store on June 29. How do I know? I was one of them!
(If you go to the techy parts of cities in Europe and Asia, you'll actually see quite a few iPhones...)
More recently, when Apple officially announced they'd reached the 1 million mark, the whisper was that AT&T had achieved 600,000 activations.
1,000,000 vs 600,000.
Do the math.
WalMart is running a 2 for 1 special on tinfoil.
Since, Apple has learned that using public domain solutions (FreeBSD, SAMBA, Apache, JAVA etc. etc.) brings them into a far more profitable situation.
Now, it seems that this learning has to start all over again with their iPhone.
Imagine how many iPhones would already have been sold world-wide if Apple would not have sticked so much to their "one operator only" policy?
The European market would have been open already since June 2007. What a profit would it have been to sell the iPhone to early adopters for 600 Euros, by just releasing it to the normal retail channels?
Apple is now still struggling to get their place in Europe due to this too strict policy.
Come on, Apple! LEARN!
http://9to5mac.com/apple-orange-ipone-details-43252450
and the French Law is here...
http://www.minefi.gouv.fr/directions...fiches/b31.htm
Generally, my friends are rarely clueless!
And for those of you who don't speak/understand French, here's a rough translation:
SIM locking is a authorized procedure in France in order to prevent fraudsters and thieves reselling the phone in France or abroad. It keeps a cell phone from being used on a network other than the one the SIM card was issued for. [so much for the basics
Nevertheless, after a 6 month period, the operators [of the network] are obliged, on the customer's request, to freely provide the code to unlock the phone.
Or so.
Don't judge me too much on my French, it's becoming somewhat rusty.
As for the ligitimicy of this information: It comes directly from a French government body's website, the Directorate of competition, consumption and the repression of frauds.
Anyways, it will be highly entertaining to see what creative solutions Apple will come up with to accomodate the laws in the consumer friendly European countries.
edit: Just saw they did the translation already on 9to5mac. I feel so embarrassed now...
And for those of you who don't speak/understand French, here's a rough translation:
SIM locking is a authorized procedure in France in order to prevent fraudsters and thieves reselling the phone in France or abroad. It keeps a cell phone from being used on a network other than the one the SIM card was issued for. [so much for the basics
Nevertheless, after a 6 month period, the operators [of the network] are obliged, on the customer's request, to freely provide the code to unlock the phone.
Or so.
Don't judge me too much on my French, it's becoming somewhat rusty.
As for the ligitimicy of this information: It comes directly from a French government body's website, the Directorate of competition, consumption and the repression of frauds.
Anyways, it will be highly entertaining to see what creative solutions Apple will come up with to accomodate the laws in the consumer friendly European countries.
edit: Just saw they did the translation already on 9to5mac. I feel so embarrassed now...
Your french is fine (it's the english you need to worry about....try "legitimacy"...)
While it is six months in France by law, it is zero months in Belgium and Luxemburg - where simlocking is not allowed. How many European markets does Apple intend to ignore while users cross the border, buy phones and unlock them? Won't take long for someone's competition authority to haul them into court... If Apple want to play in the EU, they'll have to play by EU rules.
So if the carrier is required to be to unlock the phone upon request after 6 months, that puts them in a bind when they aren't the manufacturer of the phone. That leads me to believe that the carrier would negotiate a contract with Apple that spells out what happens if Apple doesn't (or can't) provide the unlock mechanism in time.
My bet is that they already have such functionality built in or ready to go for a future firmware update. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll give consumers the ability to unlock phones at whim. I could see it being only possible via a triggering message sent via the current carrier's network.
In the long run though, I don't think apple is for "locked" phones. I think the current situation makes sense for them because of a number of factors. The iPhone roll-out was fairly smooth considering it was apple's first experience in selling a million mobile phones. Imagine how many more horror stories would have been posted in various forums if Apple had gone with 6 carriers instead of one for the roll-out. Providing support would have difficult for a company with zero experience in the mobile phone market. Also, Apple needed some insurance that they'd have a carrier for the iPhone for at least a few years. Exclusivity was probably the only way to land such an assurance.
In my opinion, locked phones are a business tool Apple needed to enter the market. After gaining a foothold though, I doubt Apple will need any form of locking.
On the other hand, hacking really doesn't seem like a concern of Apple's whatsoever. It doesn't go against any of the likely motives they had for using an exclusive carriers. To me it seems like hacking doesn't even enter their train of thought. Updates might break hacks simply because Apple isn't even looking at the hacks let alone testing for compatibility. There aren't enough hackers to make it worth their while.
The point is that Apple will be releasing an update soon and it "may" brick some phones. Apple may not care to test their update on hacked phones which is why they are saying "maybe" to it bricking some hacks. They may not care to understand completely how the hack works because that means they spend their time and money doing something they shouldn't have to do.
If the Developers can hack the phone, they can surely restore it. However, re-unlocking it or more accurately unlocking the latest firmware, may be a challenge, again, for them, which I am certain they are willing and eager to take on. It may take another two months to unlock SW 1.X.X. It may only be necessary for certain mods used.
Regardless of any pending updates (remember, it isn't out yet), hacked phones will continue to work and do not have to be udapted. Chillax...